Tu Aime Mon Chapeaux Verde Grande? Part 7
The morning or the afternoon following the wedding there was a confusing clamor of disembodied voices, which woke me up, and when I opened my eyes to discern the location of the speakers, I was instantly stabbed by a monstrous flood of springtime sunlight. I found myself mostly naked in my cot, which had collapsed apparently. I instantly realized, with some desperation, that I dearly needed to pee, but the fear of a potential overwhelming nausea kept me grounded. I concentrated very hard to determine the sources of the voices.
"Hey, guess what? I didn't hear Lucas get up to puke last night," said the first voice, which I could tell now belonged to Laura's brother, somebody who hates wine and thus naturally would be the first person to wake up the day after a hideously out-of-control wine party.
The second voice sounded like one of Laura's friends. "Ow. My head. Maybe I should go for my morning run. Or not." This had to be Christina, who travelled here all the way from Texas. "Whose pants are these?"
"I don't know," said the first voice again, "they look like Conor's."
"What are they doing on the lamp?"
"I have no idea. I'm so confused."
"Ow, my head," repeated Christina.
I suddenly recalled taking great care to fold my clothes before falling asleep. I remembered that it was imperative that they be hung up somewhere after the party, so I stumbled drunkenly around the house for what seemed like an hour before I gave up and draped my pants over the lampshade. Now, however, it was painfully bright so I shut my eyes. If it took this kind of cue for me to recall something as simple as where my clothes were, I realized, then it would do me well to try to remember the highlights of the reception before they evaporated from my memory. Like alcohol from a bloodstream, as it were.
Fact: At the party, several of Gaz's friends wrote and sang him a song. One man brought out two guitars and assembled a impromptu chorus of his other friends, which surprised and delighted the rest of the reception.
Fact: Not long after beginning the first course, an already tipsy French woman came to our table and leaned precariously over to explain that if we happened to catch any of our fellow table-mates touching their drink with their right hands, then we were to yell "buffalo!" which would require the offender to stand and polish off their drink amid jeers from the rest of the room. There was one man who was "buffaloed" so many times that I began to suspect he was doing it on purpose. From what I could tell, this drinking game was not native to France, it was instead imported from England or Texas (or Pullman, WA), but the French dressed the ritual up with an ancient and embarrassingly bawdy drinking song. I couldn't make out the words but debauchery is the same in any language.
Fact: Natasha repeatedly dressed in a tutu to perform skits that involved a great deal of prancing around to act out a caricature of matrimonial life. As the night deepened, she exerted lessening effort to get into her leotard. By the end of the party she was simply wearing the tutu around the room.
Fact: At some point somebody dimmed the lights and a DJ popped in from seemingly nowhere and adults and children alike began to get their freaks on. It was so dim that I needed a tripod, which I naturally didn't bring. Out of necessity, then, I grabbed a three hundred dollar bottle of wine (a 1990 Corton Grand Cru, most of which I had already imbibed) and started using it as a surrogate.
Fact: A man, who may or may not have held party record-holder for most times buffaloed, whipped out an accordion and drunkenly played it at 4:00 AM, and everybody, even myself, found themselves swaying to his song. I remember putting my camera down and joining the circle, caught in the moment.
Now, however, my cot was broken and it made me sad and anxious to pee. I tossed and turned for a half hour before I gave in, found some clothes, and headed to the bathroom. My headache wasn't as bad as I thought it would be but I was definitely feeling a little creaky and swimmy.
I could hear muffled voices out on the patio. A couple of my fellow gîtemates. I hobbled down the cement steps and sat heavily in one of the deck chairs. Lucas and Rachel sat there looking at me through impossibly dark sunglasses, cigarettes slowly burning. There was a heap of cigarette butts in the ashtray. Lucas reached over and smashed his cigarette out, then stood up and gave an enormous stretch.
"Arrrr," he said, like a pirate, one eye closed through his yawn.
"Oh man. Totally arrrr," I said, smiling wearily. "Oh my God, Lucas, do you remember at one point last night tapping me on the shoulder? Then it looked like you were gonna say something for a second, but all you said was ARRRR. I swear you did that twice."
Lucas's laughter quickly turned into a wince. "Arrrrr," he said again, "yeah. I was pretty drunk. Hey, so, Laura says there's breakfast down at Gaz's house."
"Awesome. I'll let you know when I'm hungry," I said.
"Yeah. I'm not so hungry either. I'm really, really thirsty though. Really thirsty. Be back in a few," he said, walking back inside the house. He left Rachel and I alone on the patio. She put her cigarette out.
"Hey, so you lived," she said.[1]
"Hey, it's a miracle," I replied.
"Was it so bad? The French festivities and all that? Did you dance? Did you get your groove on?"
"I didn't dance," I said, looking away. "I can't dance. But I don't think anybody minded. I did talk to some people though, which was sort of ridiculous, considering that I had to repeat myself like ten times per noun."
"Neither can I." Rachel said flatly.[2] "Dance, that is. But you saw me dancing, right? And congratulations on talking. You know Conor, it's a pity though that it takes you half a bottle of wine to speak to strangers."
"Hey, now," I said defensively. "they're not just strangers. They're foreign strangers. And I actually developed a method of talking to foreign strangers that has nothing to do with wine."
Rachel gave me a surprisingly earnest look. "Really? What's your method? Do enlighten me."
This made me smug. "I just go up and say something that makes no sense in either language. Like I'll go up and say a quick catch phrase like, 'Aren't I removing socks well?' and they laugh, like, 'What the fuck?' and then I just give them a very, very wide smile, and nine times out of ten they'll say something back in English like, 'You must be wearing a fine three,' and before you know it, we're clapping each other on the back and toasting to absurdity."
"Good God."
I was pretty excited to put my theory in words that sounded halfway coherent. "Totally not making this up!" I exclaimed. "The language barrier is not a hurdle, it's a tool! This whole time I've been afraid of judgment at the hands of our hosts, worried that they'll reject my dumb American ass for not being able to speak French, but as it turns out, miscommunication can be hilarious."
Rachel rolled her eyes. "Yeah, when everybody's drunk."
"Oh yeah? Good morning! ¿Tu aimez mon chapeau verde grande?"[3] I asked, with genuine enthusiasm.
Rachel laughed, in spite of herself. "What the fuck? That's half Spanish!"
"Whatever. It worked, did it not?"
"Conor. Good God."
Lucas reemerged from the gîte. "Hey pirates," he said, "I'm hungry, Brit's not planning to be up for an hour, and I've got a mean hunger. Lets go get breakfast. If I don't get some coffee I'll keel-haul somebody. Arrrr."
"Aye," I said.
"Aye," agreed Rachel. "Nous allons à la bibliothèque avec du fromage."[4]
"What the fuck?" asked Lucas, his face a caricature of someone amused to disbelief.
"Exactly! Let's go," I said. So we went and had breakfast.
1. This is another conversation with "Rachel" that never happened.
2. I bet the real Rachel could dance like she had ants in her pants. She gave me that impression.
3. Do you like my big green hat? (The astute, trilingual reader would note that verde and grande are Spanish words)
4. "We go to the library with some cheese."